Johny Hendricks had taken the best from Georges St-Pierre, Robbie Lawler and Rick Story over the years but his granite-chin had always held firm.
In a career spanning almost nine years, Hendricks had never been stopped.
But along came a kickboxer intent on bucking that trend as Stephen Thompson took out the former UFC welterweight champion with aplomb on Saturday night.
‘Wonderboy’ looked calm as could be when he took to the octagon for the biggest fight of his life and made quick work of making Hendricks look decidedly average on the feet.
Using his usual karate stance, Thompson bounced confidently around on the balls of his feet and gauged Hendricks’ timing early on which soon led to ‘Wonderboy’ lighting him up with jabs and straight rights.
Then came the kicks.
"@WonderboyMMA by first round TKO!" Thompson stops @JohnyHendricks with a devastating performance. 👊💪 #UFCVegas https://t.co/KpDlJWG2nr
— UFC on TNT Sports (@ufcontnt) February 7, 2016
Roundhouse kicks, question mark kicks and spinning back kicks all landed to Hendricks’ chin and midsection, peppering a piece of meat that had long been cooked.
Try as he might’ve, ‘Big Rigg’ couldn’t tough it out until the second round as Thompson hurt him badly against the fence when the tornado of heels and shins became too aggressive a storm for Hendricks to weather.
He fell to the mat, John McCarthy stepped in and the queue for a shot at Robbie Lawler just got one man longer.
